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And now here I was, recounting what had happened a decade ago to my best friend for the first time.
“I can’t believe you never told me what Mr. Killarny did to your dad. It’s so fucked up.”
I
nodded, somewhat in a daze. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to know the truth of what went on between them. I just didn’t know what I should say. You know exactly how powerful Sean Killarny is in this town. Everyone is under his thumb in one way or another, or they are loyal to him.”
Lorna shrugged. “Well, you may have lucked out on your timing, because Sean Killarny has basically skipped town. He isn’t living around here anymore. I think he shows back up from time to time, but I heard he’s got a place down in Costa Rica.”
That didn’t make much sense to me, but I didn’t press. Maybe Emily Killarny had decided that she wanted a time share and they were spending their retirement basking in the sun on the beach. It was more than my parents would ever be able to do. My mother had passed away not long after graduation ten years before, and now I was on the verge of losing my father as well.
“Good riddance. It’ll be bad enough to have to see the rest of the gang of brothers around town.”
She regarded me for a moment before speaking up again. “And you’re sure you’re not still…I don’t know, harboring any kind of romantic feelings toward Alex?”
I frowned. “Seriously? It was all I could do not to spit on him when I saw him in the hardware store. He is the last person I want to see, and I definitely don’t want to be involved with him. That was over a long time ago, and I have no desire to see it start up again. There’s literally no good feeling left in me for him. What we had is nothing more than a memory now, and it’s a muddied one at that. We were kids, Lorna. You get over those things and move on.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. Our conversation moved toward other things, and I wasn’t sure exactly what I had hoped to accomplish by discussing that drama with her, other than to get it off my chest and finally let her know what had really precipitated my breakup with Alex Killarny.
A little while later after she was gone, I went over to one of the boxes of things I still had to unpack. I knew what I was looking for. There was a smaller box inside where I kept some mementos from when I was younger, and there I found the wallet sized photo of Alex and I that was taken at our prom. We looked so young like heartache had never touched either of us before. Somewhere in my eyes, I could see a hint of something though. I knew that things were going badly and that night was going to be tough. My mother was sick, and there was a sadness in my gaze as I smiled at the camera.
I looked at where my 18-year-old hand rested on his chest and thought about where it hand landed when I had crashed into him just a few hours ago—at exactly the same place. His chest was still as firm and as solid as it had been when he was 18, maybe even more so now. He was broader, and his hair was still black, combed back away from his face. His eyes were a coal gray and his gaze steady and unnerving as he regarded me at that moment, clearly as shocked to see me as I was to see him. And although I had run away, I had to admit there was a part of me that wanted to stay…to stand and look at Alex Killarny for the first time in ten years and get a good look at his gorgeous face, the lines of it, to see how the contours had changed and how the line of his jaw was still the very same as it had been the night of our prom when the stubble there had tickled my stomach as he brought his face between my legs and showed me what an orgasm felt like.
I pressed my thighs together as I thought about what it had been like to be with him back then. We were still very young, and I had been with men since, but none quite like Alex. No one that held me with the tenderness he had. No one that had the kind of command over my body, the way he insisted that I come multiple times before he ever thought about himself. But then when he was inside me, the insistent drive and his insatiable need for me.
I was wet just thinking about it, and I put the photo away, regretting that I had stirred up those long dead feelings, and desperately needing release at the same time. I stripped down and headed to my shower, intent on getting exactly that.
Chapter 3
Alex
I was too stunned to move as quickly as she did and Maddy was out of the hardware store before I made it to the counter. For a moment I simply stood there at the end of the aisle trying to catch my breath and understand what had happened. What the hell was Maddy doing back in town and of all places for her to be…right here in the middle of the hardware store? It was a head scratcher for sure, but I didn’t want to stick around any longer. Seeing her was such a shock to my system that I just wanted to pay for what I had come to the hardware store for and get out of there and back to the ranch.
I could tell from the look on Charlie McCall’s face that he was recalling who Madison Graston and I had once been to one another and was wondering if there was going to be a scene. When she and I had dated during high school, she did a little work on the side for Doc Halloran and was often in the hardware store running errands for the old man. Charlie knew both of us and knew that at one time we had meant something to each other. And now we didn’t.
“Anything else I can help you with there, Alex?” The older man asked politely, raising a brow.
I shook my head and put the can of WD-40 down on the countertop, pulling a few crisp bills from my wallet and waiting for the change. “That’s all I need, thanks.”
He slid a couple of quarters and a dime across the counter, and I pocketed it as I stepped back outside, grateful for the fresh air that seemed to fill my lungs in a way that the air in the store had failed to. Being near her was like losing my breath, and I hated that she had any kind of effect on me. It was ridiculous to think it was anything though. We hadn’t seen each other in ten years so of course running into her unexpectedly would rattle my nerves.
I tried to shake it off as I headed to my truck, glancing up and down the street to see if I could catch a glimpse of her. Wherever she had gone, she was already inside, and I was in no mood to run into her again. I started my truck and made a u-turn in the middle of the street, moving back in the direction of the ranch.
It wasn’t until I was more than halfway back to Killarny Estate that I realized I had forgotten to go to the vet’s office. Oh well, I would just have to leave a note with Pete’s secretary to make a call. Pete never gave her enough to do anyway, and she would be grateful for some more work. Plus it saved me having to turn around and go back into town and risk running into Maddy again.
My jaw was tight, and I could feel my teeth grinding against each other like the stones in a gristmill, some deep anxiety starting to rear its ugly head. I tried to chalk it up to the time, and the distance spent apart, but if I was honest with myself, it was more than that. Seeing her again had reminded me of the way the girl had always made me feel. I wanted to grab her, like the primitive part of my brain was taking over and my animal instincts were overriding any kind of propriety my mom had taught me. I wanted to grab Maddy and pull her close like she had been when she crashed into me in the back of the store. The collision was so unexpected, and I had jumped away like she was something on fire. That’s the way she felt to me—blazing like a bonfire, her red hair, the licking flame that beckoned me to her like a moth.
I shook my head. That was some real shit, and I didn’t have time to start having fantasies about…who? A girl I had fucked a few times in high school. That’s what it had amounted to in the end, hadn’t it? Sure back when we were teenagers, we had talked about getting married, but there was no way in hell that was going to happen. Not after everything that had happened between our fathers. Not after her mother…
But my God, had Madison Graston ever turned out to be so damn gorgeous. God damn fucking beautiful, even dressed like she had stepped right off a farm. It was all I could do not to put my hands around that little waist and pull her hips close to mine and let her know exactly what she did to me, still, after all that time had passed. She looked different than she had in high school in some ways, something about her was softer. She still had the same tight, toned little figure she had when we were young, but in those seconds that I was able to look at her there at McCall’s I could see that her hips had rounded out slightly, her breasts were a little larger, and her eyes were bright and clear. She looked fucking amazing, and even better with her hair all piled up on top of her head, dressed like she had work to do.
What the hell was she doing in an old pair of overalls? Sure, that was the Maddy I had known back in the day, but I doubted that whatever line of work she had ended up in dictated that she wear overalls regularly. And picking up paint? Maybe she was doing something over at her father’s place, but I hadn’t heard of anything of the sort. I’d have to ask Pete if he knew of anything going on over at the Graston place.
Just about that time, I realized I had been daydreaming, thinking too much about my encounter with Maddy, and I almost missed the turn for the ranch. I put my foot on the brake and turned in, continuing down the road to the main house.
I wasted no time when I pulled up in front of the house, hopping out and heading back inside to Pete’s office where I had left him earlier. He was still there, and for all, I knew he was working on the same thing I had left him doing earlier.
“Here’s the receipt for this,” I said as I showed him the can and slid the piece of paper across his desk. “You really don’t have to reimburse me for that stuff.”
